CHARGE MORE, CHARGE MORE, CHARGE MORE

In order to success in business, you need to charge more. High prices cure most problems in a business.

Need better support? CHARGE MORE.

Cheap customers are bad customer. Bad customer has a combination of the following traits:

Act like an ass hole.

Cheap.

Technology illiterate.

No matter where you go and what business you are in, you are bound to encounter bad customers. Bad customers are essentially bad people. They don’t value their time nor mine. In the mobile app business, with an life time customer value (LTV) of $1.99 less 30% Apple commission. Any contact with the customer other than sending them to an FAQ page is a losing proposition. The business model of a one-time purchase app is essentially a ponzi scheme, it is relying on new customers to support future the development and maintenance.

Need stable revenue? CHARGE MORE.

I have created and acquired a few one time purchase app. My plan is to leverage the existing customer base and take money from them. Like I mentioned before, a one time purchase app is essentially a ponzi scheme. I like to earn more cash from existing customers more frequently.So how to turn a one-time purchase app into a viable business? It’s simple, by increasing the LTV:

The first things that come to mind is some kind of subscription model. However, app with subscription model or iCloud integration cannot be directly transferred. It means I can’t sell the app as multiple of profits since the ranking and existing customer can’t be transferred.

Consumable In-app purchase. I am opting for consumable IAP, I got this idea from DocScan where the app let you buy credit and use them when you need to send fax.

My first test is MileBuddy Lite. I spent approx 20 days designing and implementing this app a few years back. My original plan was to use the lite version as bait to get people to buy the full version MileBuddy. I originally set the full version to $2.99, what’s a big mistake. The people who bought your $2.99 app thought they own the life of my children. These customer are mostly cheap, rude and computer illiterate, support was a nightmare. Later I changed the price to $29.99. I made about the same amount each month. However, the quality of customer increased substantially. I never get any support email nor nasty review any more.

In the new revenue model, I am going to update MileBuddy Lite to the full version, same as MileBuddy, and it will be charging credits per report export and backup.